A Tale of Two Consensus

This short comment is about a personal foray into publishing in ‘Science’. Before getting into detail of the submission and rejection of the comment, I would like to look at the financial model of Science, as it is somewhat unique (there other similar models but they are not the subject of this commentary). Unlike truly academic journals, Science is based on a profit making market model. You can view their advertising rates and policies at: http://www.sciencemag.org/help/advertisers/2010_FullMediaKitnorates.pdf

Now on with the story. In 2004 Oreskes published her now infamous paper ‘BEYOND THE IVORY TOWER: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change’ in Science (Science 3 December 2004: Vol. 306. no. 5702, p. 1686). In the article she made the claim ‘The scientific consensus is clearly expressed in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).’ and this ‘states unequivocally that the consensus of scientific opinion is that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities...’. Of the 928 abstracts/papers she analyzed ‘Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position.’

The article resulted in many criticisms, concerning both the sample selection and research methods - post publication.

At the same time as Oreskes was conducting her research I was collecting data for a second survey of climate scientists (results available at http://coast.gkss.de/staff/bray/surveyintro.html. My results were a little different. Differnt conclusions were reached. In the results of a survey of climate scientists conducted in 2003 one question on the survey asked ‘To what extent do you agree or disagree that climate change is mostly the result of anthropogenic causes?’ A value of 1 indicates strongly agree and a value of 7 indicates strongly disagree. The results were:

1 strongly agree -  50 (9.4% of valid responses)
2 - 134 (25.3% of valid responses)
3 - 112 (21.1% of valid responses)
4 - 75 (14.2% of valid responses)
5 - 45 (8.5% of valid responses)
6 - 60 (10.8% valid responses)
7 strongly disagree - 54 (9.7% of valid responses)

Furthermore, ‘In fact, the results of the two surveys {1996, 2003) even question the Oreskes claim that the majority of climate scientists agree with the IPCC, although this has improved somewhat between 1996 and 2003. In the 1996 survey only 8.2% of the valid responses strongly agreed with the statement that the IPCC reports accurately reflect the consensus of thought within the scientific community while in 2003 the number rose to 22.8%.’ The full letter to Science titled ‘THE NOT SO CLEAR CONSENSUS ON CLIMATE CHANGE can be found here: http://www.sepp.org/Archive/NewSEPP/Bray.htm or on many other blogs on the net.

Anyway, the point is the comment was not published. Like Orekes’ published comment, this too met with many criticisms concerning sample selection and research methods - pre-publication.

The reason given for the rejection was that the comment did not match current publishing needs.

The point is, why was one comment published and the other not?

Anyone with their wits about them are well aware of the phenomenon that has come to be called ‘green washing’. But just in case, according to http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Greenwashing “Greenwashing is the unjustified appropriation of environmental virtue by a company, an industry, a government, a politician or even a non-government organization to create a pro-environmental image, sell a product or a policy, or to try and rehabilitate their standing with the public and decision makers after being embroiled in controversy.”.

Now this - greenwashing - does not of course refer to ‘Science’ per se, but it may refer to some of its advertising clients, and to gain and maintain those clients and to sell advertising space, perhaps it is necessary that Science maintains a ‘green’ image.. These clients, to achieve the desired image, would only want to be associated with things ‘green’ or those professing to support green images. No longer are corporate PR managers satisfied with the mere offering of 40% less fat (less than what?) but have grander images of global environmental and humanitarian design. And of course, the desired message must be incorporated in the appropriate means, there is no advantage to advertising cheese in a vegan magazine.

Who are some of the main advertisers in Science: GE. for one, claiming on the corporate website (http://www.ge.com/company/index.html) to put ‘into practice GE's belief that financial and environmental performance can work together to drive company growth while taking on some of the world's toughest challenges’; AB Applied Biosystems, who claim to be ‘dedicated to protecting the environment [and to] strives to create products with lifecycles that tread lightly on the environment.’ (http://www.lifetechnologies.com/global-citizenship/environmental-health-safety.html); Pew Environmental Org who state ‘The Pew Campaign on Global Warming is aimed at adoption of a national policy to reduce emissions throughout the economy, and the Pew Campaign for Fuel Efficiency seeks more stringent fuel efficiency standards for the nation’s cars and trucks.’ (http://www.pewtrusts.org/our_work_category.aspx?id=112).

Then there is Exxon (not in Science): ‘Our goal is to achieve excellent environmental performance in each of our businesses to Protect Tomorrow. Today.’ (http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/energy.aspx).

So how do these companies differ? One, Exxon, purportedly sponsors the message, the others tend to sponsor the means (Science). The question is, does Science’s quest for appropriate image come at a cost to content? Can the charges leveled against ‘industry’ funded research be applied to ‘we want to have a green image’ commercial (Science is a commercial enterprise) journal? Does advertising have a place in academic journals?

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